e rich.
There the coins clink, but round the sterile chairs
And desks of poets only kisses rustle.[28]

In the same way that nature is displeased with wordiness, she is
displeased with ideas that are too commonplace, for it is a kind of
loquacity to bubble on with the commonplace and trite, since it is the
purpose of speech to reveal what isn't known, not to repeat what is
known and worn-out. Countless epigrams have been excluded from this
selection for this fault, but since there is nothing more common I
will omit offering examples.

_On trifling wit, and plays on words._

Not a little displeasing, also, is an assiduity in trifling which
withdraws the mind from solid subject-matter out of which true beauty
springs. Plays on words, puns and other playing around of that kind,
unless they come to the judgement of the pen within the bounds of art,
are not so much figures of speech as faults of style, and in those
epigrams where the point rests solely in these there is nothing
thinner, especially when they are so peculiar to one language that
they cannot be translated into another. On this basis we have passed
over such frivolous witticisms as Owen's:

Rope ends the robber, death is his last haul;
The gallows gets the gangster--if not all,
If many get away, God gives no hope:
It's an odd thief dies with no coffin rope.[29]

A little more humorous is that of another poet on the Swiss killed at
night, though it too is faulty:

Annihilated in night snow by a nut stick,
I snow, night, nut, now, and annihilation know.[30]

_In what way natural inclinations are to be gratified._

We must carefully avoid all these natural sources of aversion and no
less gratify natural inclinations if we wish to attain that beauty we
aim at. For self-love is so strong in men that they can hear nothing
with pleasure unless it flatters them with their own feelings. For
which reason those epigrams have correctly been judged best that
penetrate deeper into those feelings and present to the reader's mind
an idea recognised not only by the interior light but also by the
interior feeling as quite true, so that he can be seduced into
embracing it: for example, Martial's:

I scorn the fame purchased with easy blood
And praise the man who can be praised alive.[31]

For, since everyone hates death and longs for praise and glory, there
is no one who would not be glad if he could be praised without dyin